|
|
|
[wed jan 1st, 2020 »12:00a] |
|
we were just born to lose this life.
|
|
| 021. 24 August 1943 |
[tue aug 24th, 2010 »6:33p] |
[ WARDED TO GWEN MORGAN - effectively PRIVATE ]Hi Gwen.
We won. I was thinking that this is something you will want to know. I do not know if you were seeing any of it. Dumbledore came, and he fought with Grindelwald in a duel. Your head of house was brilliant, if you were missing it. It was like nothing I was ever seeing before. But I wish he was coming a bit sooner. Then maybe you will have been able to see it. I am sure he is wishing the same thing.
Moody is saying that you were dying in battle. He is the only one who is seeming to know anything about you, about what was happening to you, and I do not think he will say so if he was not knowing it. I was looking for you anyway, in the hospital, but there was nothing. But I do not know if I am able to believe it yet. I keep expecting to see you on the train. There are too many things remaining that you are going to do. You were going to play for the Harpies, and I was going to play for someone, maybe for the Catapults. And we were going to have brilliant matches. And I was going to kick your arse, but you were going to make me work for it. And you were going to explain to me what you were meaning about Welsh vowels. Now I will have to learn it with only myself.
I might have been knowing already that telling you that you cannot die was a mistake. With all the time we were fighting, I do not know how I was not seeing before that you will never follow orders. I was not hurt so badly. I am mostly healed now. I am still having some scars, but they are nothing. Perhaps that is why I am feeling guilty. Several others students were dying, but I am not yet knowing which ones. Arsenius Jigger is the only one I know for certain. Aloysius was losing his hand, and Euphemia was losing her vision, and Professor Viridian was being hurt very bad. Grindelwald was suffering none of this, and I am sorry for that much. I am not knowing what they will be doing to him, the ministry, or the authorities. I am wondering what Germany will be doing now without him. They are not going to be stable, I am sure, but they will not be stable for many years. Perhaps when the muggle war is ending, also. I hope it is ending soon.
I was going to ask you to thank your father for me just now, but then I was remembering that you cannot. Perhaps I will be doing this myself. I am glad that he was being all right when you were hearing from him. I do not know how he will be when he is finding that you are gone. Sometimes, I am starting to think that maybe I will join, too, like your father was doing. Or maybe I will be drafted now that I am a citizen here.
I wonder if we will ever stop being soldiers. Even when the wars are both over, I do not think we will.
I think if you were here, you will tell me that I am needing to find a new person to bother now - a new Gryffindor for turning her quidditch materials into gelatin the day before a game, and for flicking paper at her, or some other thing now that school is being over - but I am not wanting to. It will not be helping anything. Not anymore. I am hoping it is nice where you are. If my father is right in his thinking, about the Olam Haba and Gan Eden, I am sure that it will be nice for you. I am not knowing if they are having a quidditch pitch there, but I think they have to. It will not be any sort of place for you if they were not.
And I hope you were taking him with you. The Austrian bastard who was killing you. I hope you were giving him hell.
The train for home is leaving at 20:00. But it is not going to seem much like home anymore.
|
|
|
| 020. 22 August 1943 |
[sun aug 22nd, 2010 »5:20p] |
If I do not see some of you again, it was an honor to be serving with you. And I wish I was knowing many of you better.
If we are making it, and you are ever being in Dogmersfield, look me up.
|
|
|
| 019. 21 August 1943 |
[sat aug 21st, 2010 »1:46p] |
I do not know what I am wanting to do before I die. It looks like everyone else is already having lists of these things, but I was never thinking about it before now. I do not plan to die any time near, but it is possible that I will. And all of the things I am wanting to do are not things I can do in a few hours.
But still, it is feeling to me like I am wasting time now when I am not doing anything important today. Besides from that I am practising. But I guess practising is possible that it will keep me from having a need to be finishing the living I want to finish.
I wonder what we will do when this is over. I wonder what the world will be like. I am not being able remember what it was like before. Can anyone?
|
|
|
| 018. 21 August 1943 |
[sat aug 21st, 2010 »1:39p] |
WARDED PRIVATE
I wonder if I will be writing in this again. It is feeling to me like there is much that I need to do, and not enough time for me to do it. I do not know if I will be able to sleep tonight, but I need to or I will not be ready to fight. Which is the thing that is keeping me awake. It is a mess, you know. These things that are contradicting themselves.
Tomorrow, I will write a letter for my parents so that if I do not come back, they will have something to remember me with other than our fighting before I was leaving. I will tell my mother that I love her, because I am never doing this usually and she is needing to know. To know for sure, I mean. I believe she is already knowing something of this. And I will tell my father, too. It will be good for me to tell him, and that I am not angry with him like Max was angry for taking us away from home. And that I wish I was letting him tell me more about our heritage, because I sometimes feel like I am not connected to it like he is. And to his faith, with a g-d I do not know if I am believing in for myself. I will even write a letter to Max, because I am not seeing him for several years now, and I do not want to die without saying goodbye to my brother, no matter what it was that he was doing.
Maybe the part of this all that is being the most difficult for me is knowing that even when this war is over, the other will not be. I do not know what will be here for me in England. I am having no job and no plans waiting for me, only skills that will be practical for a quidditch player or a soldier. I am having my family, and they will perhaps need me for helping to take care of them now, but perhaps they will not be needing this. There is nothing else for me that is waiting here. But this is where I am stuck.
I am not sure if I am more afraid of never going home, or going home.
But there are reasons here for me to stay. I am beginning to see this now. There are many people here who were never welcoming to my family and who were treating us poorly because of where we were from and what we were. But there are many people who are not like this. There are people who are like Professor Flitwick, Professor Dumbledore, Charmaine Travers, Tiberius Ogden, Arsenius Jigger, Tristan Urquhart, Pomona Sprout, Juliet Scrimgeour and Kenneth Ellerby, and other students I was never really knowing very well because we were being in different houses and different years. People who were changing since I first new them, and growing up while we were not paying our attention to them. We are all changing so quickly here, growing up into the people we will be for the rest of our lives. If I die tomorrow, it will be wishing I was knowing them better.
And Gwen. And learning Welsh, with the strange vowels it is having.
Some of the people I have met are bastards, but some of them, the ones who are good people, they are worth staying for. Worth fighting for.
I have a reason to stay.
I wish I was figuring it out sooner.
|
|
|
| 017. 25 July 1943 |
[sun jul 25th, 2010 »5:02p] |
|
For Your Reading, a List of Things that I (Rudolf Wolfgang Brand) Care About More Than I am Caring Who Charmaine Travers is dating: + the fact that we are all right now in a war zone and can be attacked and killed by Austrians any times
+ the average land speed of slow-jogging manticores
+ how to dance the Charleston
+ the middle name of the Norwegian Minister for Magic
+ the temperature on Venus in degrees Kelvin
+ ideal condition of soil for creating a bonsai garden
+ how Winston Churchill is preferring his tea
+ the cure of the contagious mental sickness that is making everyone else so worried of who Charmaine Travers is dating.
We are young, but we are not children. I think it will be nice when everyone stops acting like them.
|
|
|
| 016. 11 July 1943 |
[sun jul 11th, 2010 »11:58p] |
WARDED TO GWEN MORGANI am sorry for what I said to you about your father.
I was angry. It was unfair to put this blame for the damage to Germany on him. I was knowing that already. But I think I am understanding more what it is like for them now.
|
|
|
| 015. 11 July 1943 |
[sun jul 11th, 2010 »11:33p] |
WARDED TO ACTIVE DUTY {Flying & Ground, Age 17 or Older, Students Only}Because we will soon to start fighting the Germans, and some of you will be to fight them in hand-to-hand combat and dueling with them in a close distance, I was having this idea. If you are meeting these Germans, and you are making curses at the other, it is possible that you will begin to shout at them. This is good, because shouting at your enemy is a good way to make them to be confused and fearful. However, if you are shouting at them in English, they will not know what you are saying to them. They will never never know of all the biting insults you were yelling at them, and to me this is very sad.
Therefore, I was thinking perhaps you all will like to learn some things to shout at them that they will be able to know what you are saying.
So, does anyone want to learn to swear in German?
- Rudolf W Brand
(P.S. Do not mention this to the officers of the camp, or the professors. I do not think there are any rules against this, but it is possible that it will cause trouble if they find out anyway.)
|
|
|
| 014. 29 June 1943 |
[tue jun 29th, 2010 »12:50a] |
I am beginning to fear that my mother is going to try to saw off one of my hands while I am sleeping so that I will not be able to leave.
(They will not have much use for me if I am not able to hold on to a broom anymore.)
My mother was very displeased when I was telling her that I am leaving on 9 July to fight in the war. Perhaps some of this anger of hers was because I was telling her only a few days ago that I enlisted. I was telling her then that I was not telling anyone that I was fighting, but this was not making her feel more peaceful, I think. I think perhaps she preferred when she was thinking that there was nothing I was going to be able to do with my years of learning flying from quidditch from now when she is knowing that I will be using these skills. I was also telling her that I think they will get a stipend so they will be having more money coming home, but that was not helping either. I was knowing for sure that it was bad because she was yelling at me in German, and she usually tries to use English when she is speaking to me at home because she thinks I need to practice and also because she wants her accent not to be so bad when she is speaking. Our neighbours do not speak German, but I am sure that it was loud enough for them to hear the yelling - they probably think they will be needing to call the police soon when they have not seen one of us for a number of days, or they see one of us with a shovel in the back garden.
|
|
|
| 013. 28 June 1943 |
[mon jun 28th, 2010 »2:59a] |
WARDED PRIVATEThey were finally announcing the date for departure of the students who were enlisting in the service on 23 June. I was knowing already that they would be announcing this at sometime, but I was still finding myself to be surprised when it was happening.
My mother was talking the whole day of how fearful she was for these young men, these little boys, these sons of these mothers who she is knowing in Dogmersfield and in the ministry. There are many mothers of Hogwarts children who are working at the ministry now, and some of them will talk to her. The ones who are not always thinking that they can not because they are thinking she only speaks German or she is not someone who they are able to trust because she is a German or a Jewess working in the communications. Many of these are having children of my own age or younger who are fighting. She was saying how fearful she is for them and for Germany, and how glad she is that I am not going to fight. I was not knowing how I was going to be telling her the truth when she was worrying so much for these boys who she is not even knowing them herself. I was knowing for certain that if she was knowing before now, she was going to do something to stop me from going to the war. So I was waiting to tell them until it was very late, so they would not have so much time to try something to prevent me to leave.
I was knowing that they were going to be very upset with me when I was telling them, because I was leaving and because I was not telling them about it before. But I was not knowing how much they were going to be angry. I think when I was telling them at the beginning they were thinking that I was making a joke, but they were not understanding why I would make such a joke, about enlisting in the army and that I am going to leave very soon. Then my mother was not believing me still for some time, and my father was alarmed and also confused.
Once I was finishing in explaining this to them, my mother was very sad in the first most, and she was angry in the second most. My father was just being very cold and severe since I was telling him. He was not yelling at me. But he is not understanding why I am doing this. Sometimes i am not sure that I am understanding why I am doing this either.
They were asking me again and again if I was knowing already what will happen to me if I am captured by the Germans when we are fighting. They were saying that if the Germans capture me and they are understanding and seeing that I was born there in Germany, they will be able to have me executed for treason, although they were taking away our citizenship many years ago. Or if the muggles are discovering that I am a Jew, that this will go badly also for me. They were not sure what they will do to me then, I know there are other British Jews who are fighting, so I do not know if they are in so much danger as well. My mother seems to think so. My father is not saying anything much of this. I think he is still unsure what he is thinking of all of this. He is not understanding this other war, this magical one so much. It is confusing to him what Grindelwald is wanting to do. I think it is frightening to him to think about this.
I do not know what is best for me to do, but I guess I know what I am about to be doing.
I will feel better if I am not fighting in Germany. I hope they position me on one of the other fronts.
|
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|